All references cited in this specification, and their references, are incorporated by reference herein where appropriate for teachings of additional or alternative details, features, and/or technical background.
Disclosed in the embodiments herein is an information dissemination system comprising a multifunction document production device.
Streamlined systems for obtaining needed information are continually being sought. With the advent of the Internet, people have gained a useful avenue for fulfilling their information needs. The Internet has created an explosion of valuable information, which makes it easier for users to find and obtain information. Unfortunately, information searches on the Internet suffer from an overload of irrelevant information, and typically only access public sites. In the work environment, however, a considerable amount of the information needed for streamlining a job function is not publicly available but is scrupulously vaulted in the company or institution. While fire-walled private server sites may be accessed by authorized persons through the Internet for seeking private information (as opposed to public information), information needed for the efficient conduct of one's job, is often stored on paper or other medium in the possession of third parties. Extra time and effort are needed to make the information available through the fire-walled server.
Multifunction digital copiers and printers are now common in the office equipment industry. Whereas traditional “analog” or “light-lens” copiers, available for many decades, in effect take a photograph of a hard-copy document desired to be copied, a digital copier first converts the original images to a set of digital data which is retained in a memory. Multifunction digital copiers may allow for digital input from a computer to provide for prints to be made directly. At a later time, the digital data is used to print out copies based on the original documents. The digital copies can be exact copies of the original documents, or the data can be manipulated in various ways to create prints based on the original data. Temporary storage of the image data in memory provides an opportunity for the image data to be altered for various reasons, such as “cleaning up” the image; enlarging or reducing the image; shifting or inverting the image; inserting variable data, etc. The temporary storage of the data also facilitates exporting the image data from the copier in electronic form, such as for electronic archiving purposes.
Many photocopiers, printers, and other reproduction and printing devices now include non-volatile memory (NVM), such as magnetic and optical storage media and including removable disk systems, hard drives, and other storage media systems allowing the device and/or a user to store a job the device uses or is directed to use the stored job. The data is retrievable by way of pointers and/or directory information that allow the device to locate the data. The currently prevalent method of deleting a file is to delete the pointers and/or directory information that allows the device to locate the data; the document images/data files themselves are still resident in the NVM.
Sharing of information in today's office environment is becoming more and more challenging. Information is generated and passed along in an office environment on a daily basis in hardcopy and electronic formats. It is faxed, copied, printed, and/or emailed to exchange information among co-workers. This is not the most efficient workflow for sharing information in a networked environment.
Considerable effort has been taken in the past to clear storage of data in the memory of multifunction devices after a period of time, typically after print-out of a copy or document. Such effort has been undertaken in part with security risks in mind—that the “abandoned” data still resident in memory could be hacked and accessed by a hostile party, either by electronic means or even physically by taking the device.
Another possible consideration may be in clearing storage that has been the system used to store documents for later retrieval, which may imply indexing the documents by a name or key entered by the user of the multifunction device or generated by the device, leading over time to a difficulty for users to find their documents among a large number of documents that may be similarly named or numbered.
There has been little recognition that the stored data in a multifunction device might have use beyond its subsequent use by the user to print a copy of the information.